Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Las Cruces

I visited this Applebee's on a Sunday afternoon with my wife. I'm taking 1 star away for the food experience and 1 star for the waitress quality and dining environment.

THE FOOD: I ordered a whiskey bacon burger which had a promotion that for $1 more I could add a 5 piece plate of wings. Sounds like a good deal! However when the food came out it was not up to par. Everything was very dry - the fries, lettuce, pickles, meat, and bun were all very very dry. This may have been masked with the whiskey sauce, but there was barely any sauce thus tasting mostly like a regular burger and not a "Whiskey" burger. Usually you pick wings up and you've got buffalo sauce coated on your fingers, not these wings! I could still see the brown fried batter on the wings that's how little of sauce there was.

THE WAITRESS: I feel bad if this waitress was new, but if that was the case then she received poor training. Most of the typical waitressing cues and timing were very off: when to visit to take the order, checking in adequately, cleaning as you go... She did not ask me what sauce I wanted with my buffalo wings, it was assumed I wanted Ranch and not Bleu Cheese. She did not ask how I wanted my burger, it came out well done and dry. When the food came out we had to ask for napkins and silverware. On a few occasions she would walk by us without even looking at us, if she would have looked at us she would notice that our drinks were empty. Most of the time she was nowhere to be found but if she were to approach our table, she would kindly ask if we needed anything... why yes my water is empty and I would like another one. I've been to many restaurants with well trained waitresses who are able to notice when your drink is NEAR empty and show up with a new full glass in hand without having to ask. That level of attention makes for a great dining experience which was greatly lacking here. To top it all off, our waitress mischarged another table's bill onto our credit card.

THE DINING ENVIRONMENT: As I stated earlier, I came on a Sunday afternoon with my wife and we came to watch a Football game. I think that is a relatively common occurrence in our American culture to watch football on a Sunday afternoon at a bar/restaurant. However half of the TV'S were showing bowling. When we asked the half a dozen people sitting at the bar if they were watching the bowling, they all said no and that they were there for football. So we had to request that the channel be switched from bowling to football. But of course when the channel was switched, bowling was still on the overhead audio. I did not feel that there was an awareness of the customer and environment that people like to come to a bar on a Sunday afternoon to watch football. What made watching the game with bowling audio even more difficult was that it was FREEZING cold inside. I also overheard a customer asking for a burger to be cooked "Blue" and that request was denied by the manager - so if you're a blue burger connoisseur then that will not be an option here.

To mention a few positives: the manager was quick to make things right when our card was charged for the other table's bill, the bathrooms were clean, and the staff were kind enough to allow us to stay for the full duration of the game even after we had finished dining.

However all things considered, this was not a great dining experience and unfortunately I will...

I’ll start by saying this was not an ideal dining experience. We went to Applebee’s to enjoy NFL Sunday and catch a game or two. We occupied a table in the bar area and made sure it was okay that we had a lengthy stay.

We were not the only ones with this idea. Everyone at the bar was wanting to watch a football game on NFL Sunday and they all had to stare at two small tvs in the corners of the room. Finally, multiple customers asked to have it displayed on the big screen and they obligated to changing the screen but not the sound. So for 2 quarters of the game we listened to professional bowling instead of the NFL game. I finally asked the bartender to change the sound as well in which she checked with managers and changed over a short bit later. Point being, the REALLY big TVs and the loud volume used to entertain guests wasn’t really a priority or concern to anyone even after 3 different couples brought it up.

To the food - we ordered “gorumet burgers” that were THIRTEEN DOLLARS. I ordered the Mushroom and Swiss and my review is that: the bread was on the stale side and cold. The burger itself was very dry and the waitress forgot to ask how we wanted it cooked.

The fries were also very very cold. It’s possible that neither of these are a tribute to the cooks but our waitress would disappear for 15 minutes at a time. She never checked on waters, we had to wave her down constantly and every time she did bring a water she brought a straw. We had TEN STRAWS ON OUR TABLE. She could have seen oh man they don’t need anymore straws when she brought the third, forth, fifth, sixth but no they just kept coming. She also could have noticed that we never used a single straw when she picked up our used cups but she wouldn’t have recognized that because she never picked up a single dish from our table the entire time we were there. We had five cups each stacked at the end of the table, 2 burger plates and 2 small wing plates that sat there for the entire game. Back to the original point, she didn’t bring our food out, so I wonder how long it had been sitting there waiting for someone to bring it to our table - hence it being cold.

As our food came out and our waitress was still no where to be found we had no napkins, no silverware and our ketchup was empty. So there were no utensils to even start the meal.

Next, the restaurant was freezing cold. We were thankfully traveling in an RV and we both went back outside to change into pants and heavy jackets to endure the second half of the game.

Overall, as I said, it was not a good dining experience. If this waitress was new I feel really sorry for her lack of proper training and being set up for failure. We are very thankful to have had a gift card because if we had to pay over $30 for these meals and this experience we would be...

We came in from a soccer game. It was a last minute thing and there was a lot of us. The server didn’t seem to mind but the girls at the front were extremely rude about it. I’m not quite sure why. I worked as a server for 10 years and I was trying to be nice. Again, our server was super nice about it and did great! The girls at the front kept giving the kids dirty looks and one even yelled at my 10 year old son to “move!” While he was walking to the bathroom. There also was a cash tip on a table nearby. I had already told my 7 year old to not touch it and explained it wasn’t “found money” it was someone’s tip and was important to leave it alone. Well he’s 7 and forgot maybe and picked it up again when I wasn’t looking. I see this same girl with glasses and dark hair come up and yank it out of his hand and aggressively say “that’s mine!” And walk away. I almost said something because again, u worked in family friendly restaurants before and I’ve never seen a server treat children like this. It was clear that we were trying our hardest to calm the kids down. They were riled up and tired from a soccer game, hungry, and overstimulated. It happens. That girl has no business in the service industry. But again our server was so awesome. She had clear rimmed glasses and had the sections right to the left of the hostess stand. Also the food was good too! It was a bit hot in there at first but someone turned the air one luckily. If it wasn’t for that one girl it would’ve been fine. Just making things difficult for no reason. I have no idea what her problem...